Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.

I’ve just be informed, nay guaranteed, that I’ll be an attractive single, wealthy, healthy pensioner. It’s been sewed-up, sealed and certified. Good times ahoy! Well. In 9,751 days.

From the mouth of babes …

Uganda Vision 2040: It’s a sure deal for our future!

Modern hospitals, many jobs, clean cities, RICHES, good roads …

We shall all be winners!

Yeah!

No, really. It is that simple.

And this …

More five star hotels in all parts of Uganda by 2040 …

Less congestion in cities of Uganda by 2040 …

A rich country with a strong convertible currency …

Ahem.

Plentofminroz

Freshi wohta

Plentof fahtile laaand

With these investments, backed by possitive (sic) atitudes (sic), political will and commitment, this Uganda Vision 2040 shall be achieved.

We shall all be winners!

Yeah!

Of course you can get a different view from Daily Monitor‘s Daniel Kalinaki, from his column this week: Forget Vision 2040; Give Me Vision 2016 or Give Me Siasa. 

Down at the pensioners’ island paradise, we’ll laugh at his cynicism and short-sightedness and he won’t be allowed onto our yacht.

Still, ngaha, New Vision. No.

To quote the primary audience of you awful teen magazine, Swagg, “I have jaw.”

Never read Swagg in the Saturday Vision? Let me school you.

Swagg is little more than a random photo gallery of social events from elite schools in two or three towns around Uganda.  Attempts are made to spice up the mediocre centre spread with picture captions that are totally bereft of wit and imagination and every accompanying joke falls flat.

But really, I have no problem with second-rate photos of entitled teens enjoying social events at schools at which, I admit, I studied. Seeing yourself in the media, I’ve been told, is a great way to connect with them in the future. It’s frail cheap marketing opportunity to a generation that can read, but won’t.

Not even the bad humor annoys me. It’s everything else that gets my goat.

With no hint of irony, today’s Swagg listed the “Weakest jobs in UG.” I read the article twice, in case I had missed the twist in the story. I hopelessly searched for something, anything to let me know it was another bad joke.

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of you are in school. It’s just one of those things society just forces on us … So as yet another public service, I present to you the jobs you should avoid. Here are the most suicidal jobs in Uganda.

Why Swagg? Why?

Do we need another person setting them up for failure? Was it worth your ink to vilify the same blue collar jobs that most of Uganda’s graduates will be forced to do to earn a living?

Swagg on fuel station attendants:

Firstly if you are in school and want to be a petrol station attendant, go ahead and kill yourself now and don’t waste any more time … The job of a petrol station attendant is to stand for long hours refuelling other people’s cars, breathing in petrol fumes and occasionally touching a nice car, which is the only perk of the job. And when your friends pass by, oba how do you hide in that ka uniform?

Why Swagg? Why?

Charles Caleb Colton, an English cleric wrote, “The profoundly wise to not declaim against superficial knowledge in others, as much as the profoundly ignorant.”

With my own immense ignorance and superficiality firmly established, I bow out.

Alas.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done.”

From Nazi author, Karl Hänel, in Vom Sudan zum Kap (1939):

Africa is the last place which is still open to Europe. Its economic importance can scarcely be overestimated … It is the last economic leveling place … that can provide for us the riches for which we have set up our economy and which will not again give up without a fight.

And there is no new thing under the sun.

(Translation hat tip to Kai K. Gutschow whose paper on Ernst May’s Kampala Plan I am currently reading.)

Perhaps I’ll find my salvation here.

Possibly, perchance, conceivably …

Because it’s getting dark again.

For more information visit: Weaverbird Art Uganda

Weaverbird was also profiled by the Start Journal of Arts and Culture. The article is available here.